80% of Australian don’t want the government to put renewables ahead of costs, health, housing, jobs etc

With boring regularity, when voters are asked to rank their choices, “clean” energy is not a top priority. Only 7% of Australians want the government to promote renewables ahead of other major issues. It’s the same old, same old for years, yet the media and both parties are locked in a death spiral trying to turn it into an election issue. Real people put living Standards above Virtue Signalling, says Alan Moran.

Essential poll 2018. What Australian want the government to address. Click to enlarge.

Split voters into left and right, and remarkably they all want the same things. (So we’re all still human, though it says something about the type of questions asked.)

Conservative / liberal voters want to be able to afford stuff, stay alive, have a home:

Liberal voters put renewables at number 10 out of 13.

Essential poll 2018. What Australian want the government to address. Click to enlarge.

Labor voters want to be able to afford stuff too:

Even Labor voters are only putting renewables at number 6.

Essential poll 2018. What Australian want the government to address. Click to enlarge.

The polarising media makes out we are all so different, but it’s remarkable how closely the answers matched. Nearly the same order, nearly the same percentage. Conservatives spread their answers more (are less homogeneous). They care more about state debt and terrorism, but whatever.

The message to Conservatives for the 58th time is that they can drop the whole Paris thing, the media will go crazy, but the public won’t. Obviously it’s no accident that Abbott, Trump and Dean all won. As for the 17% of conservatives who want renewables, that’ll vanish the moment our nation starts a discussion about how expensive they are, and how pointless. Over to you Scott….

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Rating: 9.7/10 (87 votes cast)

80% of Australian don't want the government to put renewables ahead of costs, health, housing, jobs etc, 9.7 out of 10 based on 87 ratings

186 comments to 80% of Australian don’t want the government to put renewables ahead of costs, health, housing, jobs etc

“Malcolm Turnbull has said he hopes to speak with Indonesian president Joko Widodo about the relationship between Australia and Indonesia after it deteriorated when Australia floated the idea of moving the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem.

Mr Turnbull will represent the Morrison government at the 2018 Our Ocean Conference in Bali this week …”

I understood it was not TA’s idea but at the request of the palace to several countries.
I look at some AO’s and wonder how on earth they were given them. Lots of awards are degraded now anyway, when sports and pop ‘celebs’ get them.

So the Queen asked for 53 knighthoods for Phil and how many takers did she get? Why does a 94 year old suddenly need one or many knighthoods? For what services — walking two steps to the rear with his hands behind his back? Dennis, I know you and Annie and TdeF are huge fans of HM the Q. Nice lady, but every time the Queen sneezes must we jump? We are a constitutional monarchy, not an absolute one.

Abbott could have politely declined the royal request as is his right as the PM of a dominion, and as anyone with an ounce of political acuity would have done given his immediate history of unpopular gaffs. Don’t get me wrong: I’m an Abbott fan; Tony is a nice bloke — a bit too nice for politics — but he does rather need someone to check his work before he goes public with it. Credlin is a veritable scalpel; she should have advised him against such a suicidal move, and monarchist or not, he should have listened if she did. You don’t hand your enemies ammunition like he did . . . and the upshot was we got stuck with Turnbull and his fetid legacy.

The knighthood thing was another case of the media not telling the whole story.
According to the media, Tony had gone completely mad.

In fact it was Prince Phillip’s 90th birthday. The last thing he needed was another honour but what else can you do and the request came directly from the Palace. It was not Tony Abbott’s idea.

Australians have gone around our honours and received honours directly from the palace. Like developer Frank Lowry who was knighted in the 2017 Queens Birthday honours. We have our own Order of Australia now but it is still tied to the Queen’s Birthday celebration or Australia Day.

This was storm in a teacup time, but to listen to the media, Tony had betrayed Australia. We are not a Republic and the knighthoods are meaningless, but a way of rewarding remarkable people at no cost.
Sir Elton John. Sir Michael Jagger. Really? At least the Queen ducked giving Sir Michael his award and delegated to Prince Charles. After all Sir Michael was involved with Princess Margaret.

It’s all manufactured nonsense. Like winking on radio. Biting an onion. The assault on Tony Abbott was comparable to the vile attacks on Donald Trump, his wife and family.

Well at least we can agree that imperial honours and Australian honours are a load of garbage. Elton John and Mick Jagger are an irrelevance — not Australian; as for Frank Lowy, he wasn’t a politician on the ropes.

This was not connected to Prince Philip’s 90th birthday, which was 3 ½ years earlier and over 2 years before Abbott was even PM. It was a random request by the palace for alleged services rendered. What could Abbott do? Simple — say no, birthday or no birthday.

Onions and winks may be fake news, but perceptions count. Context is everything and this goes to the heart of Abbott’s lack of political judgement and his inability to learn from repeated minor gaffs. “Sir Prince Philip” was ludicrous in the extreme and seen as such in most quarters; a major gaff; a totally unnecessary blunder which only added to the pressure on Abbott. As I said before any politician with nous would have avoided giving a free kick to his enemies by way of knighting a 93 ½ year old prince of dubious public merit.

I had the privilege of knowing a brilliant cartoonist. Sadly for the world at large he was painfully shy and without ambition. He was offered an introduction to the big time by Pickering and a cadetship with Disney[50 years ago], but he stayed in town playing music, drawing a weekly cartoon and drinking with his mates. But as every cartoonist must, he could distil complex situations to base spirit.

You can have international agreements/treaties/understandings/whatever, but show me the World Police who are going to come, drag you in front of World Court before throwing you in World Prison.

Foreign policy has been, and, until the NWO get their way, will always be a balance between ‘This is what we want’ and ‘What are you going to do about it?’

In real terms there is no law against us deciding to start round the clock carpet bombing of New Zealand (bet you regret scaling back your air force NOW, don’t ya Mr Kiwi!). There is only the reactions of the rest of the world. If you think you need to bomb New Zealand and think you can deal with the reactions from the rest of the world (ie nasty words in the UN) then you can launch the first air strike Wednesday morning.

Precisely. That’s what many people (and 99% of politicians) can’t get through their thick skulls. They think that if their personal power bill goes up $400 per year, that’s the end of it, when in fact everything increases in price at every level of the goods and services supply chain in a multiplier effect. There is not a single thing that is not impacted by increased energy prices. As consumers we live at the top of that energy pyramid and reap the consequences of whatever goes on with energy prices below us in that pyramid.

Agreed “cost of living” is merely a calculation with everything else as inputs. You can’t, for example, have tempering col with simultaneous rising wages without massive productivity increases that are only possible with business tax cuts. No one wants business tax cuts. If you were flying a plane you would be in a flat spin, or maybe a dog chasing its tail, for non-aviation types.

That’s exactly what they will do. I would seriously love to have a private Q&A with the entire Liberal Party to find out why they so ardently believe in catastrophic climate change (given that in the last 30 years none of the predictions have come even remotely true) and why they think renewables is the answer when all the evidence points the other way (especially noting how its failing in Europe). I would also like to know why they are so blind to what concerns the majority, and especially what used to be their voter base.

It’s crystal clear, 50 of percent don’t believe, just like there’s general population but neither party can afford to neglect the 20% that do care.

Abbott actually got it right, politically you need to address the issue while not damaging anything. Direct action did that find things that reduce net CO2 while you fix other things like salinity, use the scare to finally get nuclear Power. You can vastly improve carbon sinks by building the dams and pipelines needed to drought proof west of the great divide. Extend the old scheme and increase carbon sinks by half our national consumption.

No one needs to address the issue which is so dear to the hearts of a small percentage of the population. The government should do what governments do best – just be seen to be addressing an issue, but don’t really do anything except set up committees, working groups, etc, and get them to say how wonderful everything will be in 5 years time. Call me cynical…

At least the French have a good system in place for this, they can announce, and approve amazing new laws, but until they are formally published, they can’t be implemented or enforced. Unless it is something really urgent, this process can take years, or it could effectively never happen (the list gets longer, and priorities change…).

You can vastly improve carbon sinks by building the dams and pipelines needed to drought proof west of the great divide.

Bradfield is pie in the sky. No east flowing river in the north has flooded for years. All the money spent channeling water west would have had zero water delivered. What is the ROI on that? How do the farmers who “bought” this non-existent water survive? By siphoning off aid to graziers?

The only schemes which pass the sniff test are Burdekin Falls II and Hells Gate [also on the Burdekin]. There is a lot of good land on the coast which could be irrigated from Burdekin Falls but Hells Gate is the only option AFAIK which can reliably send water west.

Putting on my rose coloured glasses, Morrison has to say we don’t need to decarbonise our economy because CO2 doesn’t cause global warming. The man is an empty vessel on climate change and should talk with the ginger group.

At this stage all he need do is pull out of Paris and explain why Australia is going to build new coal fired power stations, then the MSM will explode.

On a side note, this forum is now recorded as being insecure because it does not have an SSL Certificate, and may soon not display immediately to visitors, displaying a warning page instead. Jo’s site should be able to get a free LetsEncrypt certificate to fix this issue.

Clive Palmer has more chance of shoving a kilogram of melted butted up a wildcat’s backside with a red hot needle, than he has of making a dent in the coming national elections. But he certainly puts across a convincing message with his advertising campaign.
If only the the coalition had his, or even a smidgen of his, vision!

One in every eight Australians now live in poverty, thousands are children.

Hospital specialist units such as Oncology supported by donations of equipment and many trying to cope with increasing demand from the ageing population and general population increasing at an annual rate via immigration that has reached 25 million a couple of decades earlier than expected also adding to the strain for hospitals and other services and infrastructure. The welfare cost to budgets federal and state unacceptably high and in federal budget close to 40 per cent of total spending, resettlement of refugees adding to this taxpayer burden because most of them are unemployable for various reasons a decade after arrival in Australia.

Cost of living increasing much faster than the rate of inflation due to artificially high domestic electricity and gas pricing, and the impact of those and other costs on goods and services.

Government debt continuing to increase along with interest liability as federal, state and local governments squander borrowed monies, and including grants to non-government organisations in Australia, foreign aid and UN organisations.

Elected representatives are supposed to be public servants.
And an under performing economy as businesses close and jobs are lost, most if replaced are part time positions.

They are indeed an expensive option (non religious ones anyway) and despite stereotypes many people really stretch themselves and go without luxuries to send their kids to them. The whole topic is yet another one that raises peoples hackles.

Cost of living is the major issue, and a big factor is cost of electricity.
The problem with wind generated electricity is clearly demonstrated in South Australia.
Nameplate wind capacity 1900 MW.
Average wind generation during October 600 MW.
Maximum wind generation 1200 MW.
Minimum wind generation under 100 MW.
SA grid demand minimum 700-800 MW in middle of day when roof top solar is delivering.
If the wind is blowing strongly, they need to run gas generators to maintain a stable grid and export surplus to Victoria. If it wasn’t for big brother Victoria and that big 600 MW interconnector, the system would be unworkable.
SA peak demand 1400-1500 MW in the evenings.
So SA needs to be able to supply 1500 MW from dispatchable gas/diesel and Victorian imports when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.
Therefore the investment in over 600 wind towers, at a capital cost of over $3 billion is essentially redundant. The only saving when the wind is blowing is the variable fuel cost.
But those investors in wind towers are guaranteed a return on their investment through renewable energy certificates that are added to electricity bills. A 6% pa return on $3 billion capital equals $180 million per year. With an SA population of 1.67 million, that’s over $100 per person or over $300 per household added to the cost of living solely due to wasted wind “wreckeconomics”.
Furthermore, 50% wind generation in a market is impractical. If Victoria follows SA down this path, there will be chaos. But the rent seeking investors don’t care, and governments are too inept to understand the consequences.
Send an email to the Minister for getting electricity prices down federally, and your state energy minister.

But when they get the high capacity connection to NSW the 1200MW cap will go. That means more profits for the owners of the rotating symbols of stupidity; higher electricity prices in NSW and sooner rather than later closure of coal generators in NSW as they follow Hazelwood into history.

The Morrison government should not discourage renewables in the regions, startups without subsidies would be popular.

‘In the Pilbara, Macquarie Bank has joined a proposed $22bn project that plans to use solar and wind to run local mines, create “green” hydrogen energy for north Asia and possibly export electricity to Indonesia.’

Time to sell any Macquarie Bank shares. Any mention of producing and shipping hydrogen indicates zero knowledge of the engineering (and economic) problems.
Export electricity to Indonesia??? Might be a slight problem running the cables over the tectonic divide esp. as it is one of the most active areas in the World.

Renewables? What does that mean? That wind is free? So is coal, gas. Imagine if we called them Disposables? How would that sound? Or Replaceables, which is what they are with a life span under 20 years and totally replaceable, not serviceable like power stations.

Cheaper than coal? Rubbish. Maximum against maximum, but that is comparing maximum power. When there is no wind and no sun, there is no power at all.

Reliable, cheap, plentiful coal power is called pollution. Why? Diesel is pollution with unnatural nitrous oxides produced at high compression, as bad as sulfur petrol and producing acid rain.

Where are all the armies of ecologists protesting at the massive diesel engines powering the public service in South Australia.

Reneweables? Absolute rubbish. Replaceables. No one wants them. All our money gone for nothing based on theft and deceit. In thirty years, what Climate has actually changed? The North Pole?

“Democrats are nuts, and their violence will get worse – but to help them back to sanity we must understand what’s going on with them.

We can observe the left’s behavior without understanding or judging it. In general that behavior can be summarized as a collective response to two conflicting imperatives: shout allegiance to basic Christian, and thus American, values; act at every opportunity in opposition to those values. That’s insane, but it is happening all around us, every day — ask any of the screaming harridans who protested the Kavanaugh confirmation and they’ll tell you they’re committed to the ideals of freedom, human rights, truth, and the rule of law — and yet their actions showed them spitting in the face of all they believe in, all that’s good about the American judicial and political system.

Their behavior has to change, but we can’t help them make that happen without first understanding it, and understanding starts with honest description. Although many highly visible leftists are so politically focused they’re intolerable, most ordinary democrats seem like sane, sensible, superficially educated (i.e.they present as literate, but have little or no factual knowledge of science, history, or western culture), and reasonably intelligent people you’d be glad to have as friends or neighbors — until the conversation touches on politics and you realize they’ve placed themselves beyond the reach of reason in this one area of their lives. You get together for a nice dinner: their oldest is in university but won’t study, yours drives too fast, their dog isn’t quite as gassy as yours, and everyone agrees the Twins will make it to the playoffs this year – but then someone brings up politics and it turns out they voted for Clintons every time; think Kavanaugh a rapist, see Trump as a Hitler wannabe, adore John Kerry and Jane Fonda, and think Cuba a successful democracy with great medical care for everyone.

That behavioral dichotomy demonstrates a limited, but very real, form of insanity in which the person’s actions in the political context absolutely contradict their own values and most deeply held beliefs. Thus they really do believe in civilized values and human rights, but instantly sever relationships with old friends who admit to thinking that the words “Peace and Love” don’t belong on posters of Mao Tse Tung and Che Guevara; abhor political violence and think the Nazis epitomize evil but excuse and even support Antifa; hate racism but insist on racial quotas; value American rights and American freedoms but see nothing wrong with jailing Nakoula Basseley Nakoula on a pretext; demand rational analysis and reasoned argument from everyone on everything, but respond to almost any factual political statement you make with a vituperative ad hominem attack either on you or on some other conservative somewhere or somewhen.

The behavior is insane but typical for cultists in the later stages of delusion — exactly that chronicled by Leon Festinger and his colleagues in their study of believers who seem perfectly normal in their everyday lives, but repeatedly double down to the point of violence and suicide on loyalty to a prophet whose earlier prophecies have undeniably failed.

So, for the progressive left, which prophet and what prophecy? Not Thomas Malthus as he actually was, but Malthus as misread, misinterpreted, and misused by nineteenth-century European cafe intellectuals like Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Marx, Frege, and Heidegger.

Scratch any leftist and you’ll find the foundational belief: there are too many people, the world has limited resources, and we’re all going to die. It’s nonsense, it’s the lifeboat earth fallacy, and it’s not what Malthus actually thought, but the belief identifies the prophet and the source of the prophecy that failed, that continues to fail: the future the progressive left both most fears and most assiduously strives to create.”

No, the headline is correct. 20% of people did not put replaceables in their top three concerns. There are five categories which score above replaceables. One triple.

60% of people also put cost of living in their top three. and that surely also means they want cheaper electricity which has tripled in cost with rubbish replaceables, unreliables, unservicables. There is no such implication in national security. The poorest people have been hammered with electricity costs and there is no tax deduction for the ripoff in their electricity bills, even if they paid tax.

They are our biggest trading partner and the situation is different from the middle of last century. China is not Japan, completely different people.

Australia is playing catch up with this new form of capitalism, we have started an infrastructure bank to help the Pacific islanders. This wouldn’t have happened without Beijing’s influence in the region.

They are a benevolent dictatorship, but we see them as the yellow peril or red menace. This is purely and simply xenophobia.

To Original Steve @ #14.2:
Defend yourselves? From what? From whom? You’re a member of the United Nay-shuns. No problem! They’ll take care of you:
-they’ll ban poverty
-they’ll take everyone along with them
-nobody will be left behind …
-the world will be transformed!
-the UN will take over energy supply, you won’t have to worry any more (you won’t be able to afford electricity, but what you no longer have, you soon won’t miss…)
(10 for us …. none for you … five for us … -1 for you …)
-The World will be transformed!

-you’ll be safe and sustainable with no more bad storms, no more rising sea levels and no more ocean acidification to bleach those so so pretty corals. (NB: We buy sea-side property … any condition … before you move, call us! We’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse! [Note: standard offer is .50 cal ]))

-you won’t have to listen to all those ugly facts nor hear hear any more truths ever again; you’ll be lied to continuously ….and sustainably, Oh yes.

Think about it: no more elections, no more politicians, no more …um… no more… no more responsibility!
No more problems. No more plastic bags!! Life will be just Great!

They’re coming to take us away
They’re coming to take us away ha
They’re coming to take us away ha ha
Ha ha he he ho ho
They’re coming to take us away

To the funny farm
Where life is beautiful all the time
And we’ll be happy

They’re coming to take us
They’re coming to take us away
They’re coming to take us away ha
They’re coming to take us away ha ha

To the happy home
We’ all sit and smile and twiddle our thumbs and toes
To the loony bin with all we need prescription drugs
Like Thorazine, bromine and lithium
Electric shock and insulin

To the *bleep* funny farm

They’re coming to take us away
They’re coming to take
They’re coming to take us
They’re coming to take us away
They’re coming to take us away Ha ha.

‘We can achieve much more by looking after our farmland (the soil that has to grow our food for thousands of years) and increase the storage of carbon in our soils by good management. As Christine Jones, an expert in regenerative land management, has pointed out, if farmers balance the magnesium and calcium levels in our agricultural soils we can increase soil carbon.

‘Do this over our 450 million hectares of land, increasing the soil carbon by 3 per cent, and that will neutralise our emissions by 100 per cent for ­almost a century.

‘This will achieve CO2 abatement and protect our food supply. That is a real solution — a win-win.’

Very interesting. The pilot plant will settle the ideas out and be well-worth watching. But until there’s a full costing of a turbine plant and an equivalent thorium liquid fuel powered plant from installation through service lifetime with maintenance included, then I still lean towards favouring the modern nuclear method: Liquid Fuel Thorium Reactors. Safe and serviceable for years.

You will note that the guy that wrote that is all for cutting out any man made CO2 which makes everything he says questionable, also he is very good on rhetoric but very short of engineering facts – in fact he dodges several questions raised in the comments.

Yes there are research plant running but these are raising more problems than they are solving.

The small turbine has to spin at very high speed such that there is no way it could turn a generator to directly produce 50Hz. Whatever it does produce will need a massive amount of electronics to produce domestic power and the moment you add that you reduce reliability and efficiency way below that of a HELE coal plant.

The options are nuclear and/or coal both of which have fuel readily available in Australia.

The obsession with trying to reduce the amount of plant food in the atmosphere is doomed to failure – volcanoes produce it and how do you stop them.

Trump lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.
Their economy has boomed, unemployment down to 4%, wages increased.
S&P500 way outperformed our ASX200.
UK reduced their corporate tax to 19% (18% for the year starting 1 April 2020)
and again their stock market and economy has out performed ours, with unemployment down to 4%.
Less government and less tax is better for everyone except maybe for some hangers on.

Regan and Bush believed in the trickle down effect and between 1979-2005 it appears that lower middle class incomes improved by six percent, while the upper middle class had an 80% jump in their favour.

The top one percent saw their incomes triple, its the triple up effect.

Sorry Jeff, the quickest and most permanent way to reduce the cost of living, boost employment, make business competitive and viable, and strengthen the whole economy, is to slash the artificially high cost of energy — everyone wins except the vultures who have been gorging off us via their renewables subsidies and associated profiteering (plus their academic and media cheer squad). There would be a business boom and a bounce in the standard of living to rival the best of them, all done at the stroke of a few pens. MOGA. Make Oz Great Again.

But no, we must grovel to the CO2 emissions god, pretend nothing substantial can be done to reduce power prices — I’m talkin’ ta you Angus — and instead have forced upon us more of what caused those price hikes in the first place: effing renewables. China is laughing in our face. Stupid, gullible round-eyes that we are.

You ascribe Trump’s business boom to tax cuts; you forget that he cut the price of energy that Obama had forced up in his unholy quest against fossil fuels and coal in particular; you forget that Trump made his first priority slashing Obama’s obstructive, extreme regulations that were strangling business. Lower tax helped, but it was access to cheap, reliable energy, plus reducing government interference that were the main factors in the US success story thus far.

‘Between 2006 and 2015, the energy world was turned upside-down by an epic development in the oil industry few had foreseen. From the low point, in 2006, when it imported 60% of its oil, the US became an oil powerhouse – eclipsing both Saudi Arabia and Russia – and by the end of 2015, was the world’s largest producer of natural gas.’ Guardian

Its also worth remembering that Donald’s pledge to bring the jobs back home has had a very positive impact on the US jobs market.

The UK (19% business tax) pay more for their electricity than us, but have just 4% unemployment, a better performing economy and stock market.
Our tax of 30% is a much greater cost to our businesses than any extra cost of electricity IMO.

“China’s fossil fuel-based energy production is currently (2018) increasing 3.5 times faster than its renewables (wind and solar) energy production as the country phases out renewable subsidies and returns to building more coal plants.”

Interesting results but pretty much what I would expect in the real world.
My local member in Mayo has been making lots of noise about the issue of ‘refugees’ & children on Nauru & Manus Islands. But this issue is not mentioned at all. Did it show up at all in the poll ?

Labor and Green are using Nauru detainees as a political football but fail to acknowledge that the government needs them to agree to legislation that is held up in the Senate since from memory 2016.

However, detainees were free to leave at any time after they were detained. Illegal immigrants who applied for asylum and were rejected after processing, and then lost an appeal. Many did leave after that but the more stubborn refused offers from the Australian Government. Children were born in detention centres and are used as an excuse to being resettled in Australia and for gaining public sympathy.

If the detainees were settled in New Zealand our Government wants them to be denied visa free entry into Australia that New Zealand citizens have. NZ argues that is unfair and would create second class NZ citizens. But people smugglers are watching and any sign of weakness in border control here would result in even more attempts to land illegal immigrants.

The detainees resettled in the US need a visa to travel to Australia and just like law breakers of any kind would be refused a visa application, as the US does to Australia citizens with a law breaking past.

Won’t anyone think of the four thousand of children who live on Nauru? Won’t someone take pity on them? Food is not a problem. The obesity rate in adults is 95%. No neighbours and no danger from anyone.

As for their government supported visitors who claim to be refugees from violence, what could be nice than safe in Paradise on a government pension. People in Australia spend their whole lives trying to achieve a pension in Paradise. However, as Tony Abbott said, if you like the tropics.

In fact it is a real problem for Pacific islanders. An idyllic existence. Endless sunny days under coconut trees in Paradise. Few medical services. Small islands like the Tahiti chain. 95% literacy, plenty of food but no income and nowhere to go. Nothing to buy. Island groups like Tahiti are impossibly isolated and thanks to television and the internet, they know it.

However the refugees are people who came for asylum, allegedly. Safety from harm and persecution. Now they are complaining that the Pacific Islanders are worse off than they were? Where does this economic migration stop? Let’s all march to America as if that will fix the boredom.

If America opened the doors, a few billion people would go there. Then it would not exist. The real challenge for a modern world is to create American quality of life everywhere, but do people really want what comes with it?

This is the conundrum. Climate Change appears to be a creation of the United Nations, an excuse to undermine American and Western democracies with fake science alleging that rich societies are wrecking the planet and should compensate everyone else, with cash. In fact they should hand over their governments to France and Germany and endless socialist military dictatorships. Now when have we heard that before?

AFAIK, Japan has a zero migration intake policy, and was one of the few nations that refused to accept Vietnamese a few decades ago, when they were trying to escape from the communist takeover. Yet nobody complains about their immigration policies.

It is now clear both major parties are sold on the goal to reduce emissions by any means possible. Neither party is willing to reduce power prices seriously and significantly. It’s all just doublespeak. It is therefore necessary for voters who know CAGW is a scam that neither party deserve to form government. It is now time to voice our protest by placing both major parties second last and third last on the ballot paper, with the Greens obviously being the last.

They are considering transport fuels as the next emissions reduction area of the economy.

Imagine road and rail transport cut by 30-50 per cent, air travel, tradesman and other working vehicle users, and then the rest of us including country people who often have no public transport access.

Morrison just doesn’t have the ticker to pull the whole party into line. The LNP is dead in the water and sinking fast. We need a Trump who will sack at will anyone who dares disagrees with the main principles of the leader. Turnbull would be the first to go if such a leader ever existed in the LNP. Many others would follow.

According to all the “insiders” and “experts” the voters of Wentworth REALLY care about renewable energy and the asylum seekers marooned on Nauru and Manus (not that I don’t empathise with their plight).

Surely a REAL test would be to commence building windmills along the shoreline and a housing centre for the asylum seekers.

We’d know pretty damn quickly just how much the voters of Wentworth REALLY care about renewable energy and the asylum seekers in that scenario.

The NIMBY syndrome would quash those proposals within no time at all.

Besides people only want to appear evangelical about cutting emissions – they do bugger all about it.

Transport, mining and agriculture are major sources of emissions yet everyone is whinging about $1.70 a litre petrol where it really should be north of $5.00 a litre to make us stop using so much.

There’s an election campaign right there – do the math, calculate the emissions reductions applicable to a 50% reduction in petrol consumption and what the price should be to do that.

I’d reckon $5.00 a liter would do it but I can imagine the complaints.

Petrol wasn’t part of the carbon tax before and i note the ABC is hyping a new carbon tax.

What is wrong with the Libs – obviously most of them believe there is a need to totally screw Australia to achieve a result that the Chinese and Indians will totally cover in a few months.

Just how stupid are these people – both Liberal and Labor ? I don’t mention Greens as that is obvious.

When Australian Conservatives started sending out their “surveys” I rather impolitely told them that actual conservatives don’t do push polls and don’t communicate by box-ticking, which is the foundation-stone of modern anti-education.

In my youth it was a widely held opinion that all statistics are shallow and deceptive. Maybe it was a mistake to point that out to us, since the deceivers of our age have fastened on to “the data” and tied it to what they call “the science” in such a way that nobody will feel disposed to argue. Silly TV shows and personalities are dedicated to elevating “the science” supported by “the data”. You might get mocked on The Big Bang if you doubt. DeGrasse Tyson might giggle at you. Brian Cox will certainly smirk. Whoever is doing the Hawking voice will denounce you, maybe. Confinement for deniers is not out of the question.

Look at the push-poll at the top. How do you separate housing costs, wages etc from cost of living? Why is debt not even on the list of concerns? And if the manipulators had decided to accord debt a position on the list, how would it be a separate concern from all the rest? What’s renewable energy? I’m happy if someone builds a dam in the right spot and hooks it up for hydro power. So am I for or against renewable energy? Even I don’t know.

Only in push-poll land does a problem has an independent life of its own. In push-poll land you want the government to deal with the cost of cake before it deals with the cost of flour, or eggs, or icing sugar. Because push-poll land is a fantasy land created by our turkey of an education system. It is not real.

I fail the right-wing test but I’m certainly conservative to the bone. You cannot have a conservative push-poll or a conservative response to a push-poll. Anyone engaged in or engaged by this tripe has gone bolshie.

30 Oct: Gizmodo Earther: The Amazon Rainforest Faces ‘Genocide’ Under Brazil’s New Far-Right President
by Brian Kahn
It is not hyperbole to wonder if the outcome of Sunday’s presidential election in Brazil is a planetary game over when it comes to climate change.
Proto-fascist Jair Bolsonaro handily won the presidency on Sunday on a platform of xenophobia, homophobia, and a promise to silence political dissidents. It’s a dark day for the world’s ninth-biggest economy and the 47 million Brazilians who didn’t vote for Bolsonaro or subscribe to his views…

The Washington Post reports that Bolsonaro has a plan to privatize vast swaths of the forest, turning it over to agribusiness and mining. In addition, he would like to expand hydropower and nuclear power in the region, and has indicated he will not let outside environmental groups have much sway over conservation…

Brazil is home to the largest chunk of Earth’s largest rainforest, but that forest stretches across eight other countries.
“The boundaries of ecosystems don’t follow political boundaries just like the atmosphere doesn’t,” Adrian Forsyth, the founder of the Andes Amazon Fund who has spent decades studying the region, told Earther. “If you dam the Amazon or disrupt the forest, you will destroy the food base for people in other countries.”…
Last year, conservatives cut funding to the Brazil’s agency tasked with protecting indigenous rights and land, leading to an increase violence and land grabs according to a report by the Guardian…

LinkedIn: Brian Kahn, Gizmodo
Lecturer, Columbia University
March 2013 – Present
Teach two seminars that serve as the capstone of the Climate and Society Masters program. Topics include communicating science, climate policy and finance, adaptation in New York and professional development…

Communications Coordinator
International Research Institute for Climate and Society
January 2011 – July 2013
Wrote blog posts, long-form features and used tools such as Storify to showcase climate research and policy developments. Content has been featured on NOAA and the Earth Institute homepages, social media and in newsletters.
Created new section and content types on climate.gov for decision makers by leveraging network of over 80 projects funded by NOAA Climate Program Office. These efforts also informed other publications and outreach efforts by CPO for the general public and Congress…ETChttps://www.linkedin.com/in/blkahn

I dont know much about the guy, but it seems he just wants to get stuff moving economically, and prepared to crack heads to do it.

The problem for the luvvie media, is that through PC, the 20 & 30 somethings in this world have become soft and messed up via social media, and society has collectively degenerated to the equivalent of a bunch of catty 15 year old teenage girls carping about each other and eye rolling.

I don’t know much about him either – he could be good, or he could be bad, only time will tell.

This is the problem with tarring people with the ‘far right’, or ‘fascist’ brush without hard evidence (as far as I am aware in this case). It will allow genuinely terrible and destructive leaders to get elected as most (sane) people will assume the media is, yet again, being ridiculously biased, petulant, and incendiary.

One of his attractions is that in 36 years in public life he hasn’t appeared in any of the numerous corruption cases. As the 2 previous Presidents are in jail for corruption, not to mention countless members of various Parties who helped themselves, often quite blatently, it may well be a major factor in his election.

My socialist son, who has been told not to talk politics if he wants to live in my basement [almost literal which is odd in Oz] couldn’t help himself, telling me of this crazy right winger who won in Brazil, who’s only regret is “not shooting more of them”. I have no idea to whom he referred. But for him, Trump saying he could grab women by their cute cats makes him unworthy. The fact that no missiles have been fired over Japan for a year is irrelevant.

Sth America needs a strong non-socialist. Let’s hope for Brazil that he fits the description.

29 Oct: Nature: ‘Tropical Trump’ victory in Brazil stuns scientists
Jair Bolsonaro will be the country’s next president, leaving researchers worried about the future of science, the environment and democracy.
by Jeff Tollefson
Former military officer Jair Bolsonaro rode a wave of anti-establishment anger to victory in Brazil’s presidential election on 28 October, leaving many researchers stunned and worried (LINK) about the future of their country.
“It’s a major, major disaster for Brazil, not a temporary blip,” says Paulo Artaxo, an atmospheric physicist at the University of São Paulo…

Samara Carbone, an atmospheric scientist at the Federal University of Uberlândia in Minas Gerais, says that many of her students are worried about job prospects in the environmental sciences under a Bolsonaro presidency. Some have even talked about switching fields. She wonders about her own future too, including her job safety. Carbone even wonders whether she might one day leave Brazil in search of other opportunities.
“I’m afraid of living in a place where I cannot freely express my ideas and opinions, where universities, schools and hospitals won’t be open and free to everyone, where our natural resources are no longer preserved,” she says…

Just days before the run-off election, Brazilian media reported raids by police and election authorities of at least 17 universities, which were purportedly intended to crack down on illegal campaigning. It’s against the law for academics in Brazil to advocate for particular candidates and for students to campaign in public spaces such as universities. Authorities interviewed students and professors and confiscated computer hard drives, flyers and banners.
Students and academics have criticized the raids as efforts to suppress intellectual freedom, arguing that many of the materials seized made no specific mention of either Bolsonaro or Haddad.

Students have the right to engage in political discussion about democracy and the threat of fascism, says Eliane Alves, a Brazilian biologist at the Max Planck Institute in Jena, Germany, who studies interactions between the forest and atmosphere in the Amazon. “In my opinion, this is censorship, and it smells like dictatorship.”

The rise of Bolsonaro has caught many off guard. “It’s very hard to understand what’s going on,” says Artaxo. “Brazilian society was always characterized by tolerance, but here we are, shooting to the extreme right.”https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07220-4

They havent been paying attention outside their bubble have they? I wonder if we will see something like the US style Dem meltdown? I doubt the general population in Brazil would be as tolerant as the US has been of that sort of stupidity. I wonder when the hollow “I am leaving the country” posturing will start.

From AEMO: The MTPASA result published on 30 October 2018 identifies a Low Reserve Conditions in Victoria in 2018-19. But AEMO restricts access to the graphs to participants only – government censorship?
Surprise, surprise. And what will shortages in Vic do to electricity prices this summer? Will this be discussed during the election campaign before the Vic election on Nov 24?
What’s that minister for reducing electricity prices doing?

And what will shortages in Vic do to electricity prices this summer? Will this be discussed during the election campaign before the Vic election on Nov 24?

No, it won’t be discussed because the opposition leader, Mathew Guy, is such a nondescript milquetoast who seems unwilling to take the fight to Daniel Andrews.

Just as Turnbull avoided tackling Labor on the Royal Commission findings into union corruption, Mathew Guy won’t dare mention the spectre of increased electricity prices and blackouts this summer. Heaven forbid, that might scare the luvvies and make Premier Andrews cross.

Do you get the impression that the Victorian Libs enjoy being in opposition?

Jeff Kennett would have beaten up Daniel Andrews and thrown him to the kerb. Instead, Mathew Guy seems afraid to lay a glove on Labor, despite them gifting the Libs with such gems as:

the ‘Red Shirt Rorts’
the billion dollars spent on not building a freeway
the African crime wave
the impotent police ‘service’
the compulsory Safe Schools program
and the overarching fact that the CFMEU controls the government.

29 Oct: Fox News: Newt Gingrich examines the evolution of conservatism
This is a rush transcript from “Life, Liberty & Levin,” October 28, 2018. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

GINGRICH: I think the level of hostility is beyond anything we’ve ever seen. I think the last study said 92% of the news media was hostile to Trump, of the actual coverage, story by story by story by story. I think if you are openly pro-Trump, in the “New York Times” newsroom, they’d fire you or “The Washington Post.” They would just fire you.

I mean, they say, clearly you understand, you shouldn’t be here. I mean, take the example of what Trump was saying about nationalism. Really one of the great magic moments of American history is Benjamin Franklin who goes to England to represent the colony of Pennsylvania, and after seven years realizes that he will never be accepted as an Englishman. That the aristocracy simply will not accept him even though he was a world-famous scientist and a very wealthy man.

And people have said he left as a British subject, he came back as an American, and in a way, this thing about being an American starts there. And I think it’s important to recognize it, but what Trump is saying, when he uses the word nationalism isn’t at a level of a Federalist anti- Federalist arguments, but it’s saying look, these guys on the left want to basically sell our country out for some kind of global cause ***whether it’s the Paris Accords or the International Criminal Court or the United Nations…https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/newt-gingrich-examines-the-evolution-of-conservatism

29 Oct: LSE Grantham Institute: Quantifying ambitions: how do countries’ domestic climate change targets align with their commitments to the Paris Agreement?
Countries, stakeholders and expert institutions have been making submissions to the UNFCCC’s Talanoa Dialogue in preparation for December’s COP24 climate conference…To feed into the Dialogue, the Grantham Research Institute and the World Resources Institute have been taking stock of the quantified targets set by different Parties to the Agreement…

We have analysed these NDCs and compared them with around 1,500 climate change laws passed by national legislative branches and policies issued by national executive branches. These laws and policies can be accessed in the Grantham Research Institute’s Climate Change Laws of the World database (LINK), which covers every country…

Most Parties – 157 in total – have communicated an economy-wide greenhouse gas emission reduction target within their NDCs. These are high-level targets communicated on a national level without being assigned to a specific sector…

Meanwhile, less than a third – just 57 countries and the EU – have quantified economy-wide targets within domestic laws or policies – leaving 139 countries with no targets of this nature at all. Further, only 16 countries have economy-wide targets in national laws or policies that are at least as ambitious as their NDC target. While this group does include a few large greenhouse gas emitters – Japan, Canada and Indonesia – the majority are not significant emitters…

The situation in the European Union is somewhat complicated. The EU NDC sets a collective target for the 28 member states but does not specify individual state targets. It is therefore unclear if the national economy-wide targets of the 21 members that have set them to date are consistent with the EU NDC…

We found only six countries that have set economy-wide targets beyond 2030 in their NDCs – Iraq, Cameroon, Brunei, Armenia, Bhutan and Palestine. Only 16 countries plus the EU currently look beyond 2030 in their national laws, policies and directives…READ ON

Most of the world population, 7 billion odd, dont give one R..ts…A……s about klimate change in their lives, just where the next meal will come from. Looks like same for the 25 mill odd here too to an extent.
IPCC care about the dispossessed, down trodden, abused populations ? NO, just about their agenda to stop them getting their hands on hydrocarbon fuel of any kind, that is the property of the banksters.

“New Zealand revealed this week that it signed the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment declaration in an effort to work with international partners to cut down on plastics and become a “circular economy.”
What the hell is a “circular economy.”..more lefty navel gazing.
Basically its another attack on products derived from OIL.

More green wonder from a Labour party. Not that plastic bottles are good to float around the ocean. But plastic shopping bags are actually biodegradable! I have seen the degrade quite fast when left outside. UV absorbing compounds.

Most of the photos of large swathes of plastic in the ocean I would think come via flood debris washed down rivers (or from a few tsunamis like in Japan 7 years ago). Not from lazy hoons throwing the odd bottle in the tide.

Ummmmmm..Not so quick please TRU…The bags degrade under UV light, yes. But the actual plastic does not chemically break down..There are just thousands/millions of tiny bits of plastic.Sorry but that is not very clever..

Yes, they do break down, especially the most common ones like the polyolefins used for packaging. The chemical effect has been known for many decades as the polymer chains unzip, bit by bit. It is the mechanical agitation of the sea that causes the weakened plastic to break into smaller bits. These in turn will continue to degrade while exposed to sunlight.
This doesn’t mean that not sending the plastic out to sea would help, but the most polluted rivers in the World are in third world countries. Instead of wailing and gnashing of teeth the Greenies should spend money employing poor people in those areas to clean the rivers.

Depends on the chemical type of the plastic.
Take sheeting as used for greenhouses. “Heavy duty” polyethylene will last 3 years at most. Less in the tropics. This for a much thicker film loaded with UV absorbers for protection. Many commercial users will just go for a cheaper grade (also slightly thinner) and throw it out after a year. These are typically 60-90 microns thick.
Polycarbonate comes with an acrylic film on the ‘sun’ side to help it last, whereas acrylic sheet will last 10 years (on average) except when used as cockpit covers (perspex) on planes when the breakdown is evident after 18 months. I was told that light planes operating out of Alice Springs have to/did have to replace them every 12 months. That is an extreme of mechanical and solar pressure.
Plastic bags are as thin as the producers can get away with, I haven’t kept up with the grades but typically they feel like 10-15 microns. No UV absorbers (too costly) so they breakdown rapidly, esp. in tropical conditions. Plastic bottles are thicker and often pigmented which gives protection from UV. From personal experience I once picked up a ‘clear’ 4 litre plastic bottle which had been put on a window ledge for about 18 months, and my fingers went right through the plastic. That was indoors behind glass but exposed to sunlight for about 6 hours in summer. That was in Melbourne.
So there is no set time, it will depend on your grade of plastic, its exposure to sunlight and any mechanical stresses it gets. But cheap ‘disposable’ items aren’t going to be around in the sea for a lifetime, so take the scare stories from the Greens with the usual shovel full of salt.

If I may add a comment: I have stored items in single-use shopping bags in my dry brick shed, away from light, for many years. And I have noticed that the bags eventually break up. So there must be some degradation occurring, even if incomplete.

the point is what is the degredation? Biodegredation is where the product is consumed/metabolised by microganisms thereby converting the plastic into other biological chemicals. Breakdown of most plastics is simply the breakage of chemical bonds by light/oxidation or other chemical interactions. The resultant material is likely a somewhat stable but complex organic compound that is much more mobile (e.g can be suspended in water) and which can have a level of toxicity in the environment.

29 Oct: CarbonPulse: EU Market: Carbon plunges 9% to 3-month low as bears take reins
European carbon prices continued to plummet on Monday, crashing below more technical support levels to a three-month low below €17.

30 Oct: Bloomberg: U.K. Plans 16 Pound Carbon Tax to Replace EU Market
By Mathew Carr
U.K. greenhouse-gas polluters may see their costs for emitting carbon dioxide limited if the nation crashes out of the European Union without an agreement.
That’s the implication of a proposal by the Treasury to charge a tax of 16 pounds ($20.48) a ton on emissions if Brexit talks fail, leaving the U.K. excluded from the EU Emissions Trading System starting early in 2019…
GRAPH
Power generators burning fossil fuels like coal and natural gas currently pay 18 pounds a ton for CO2 emissions under the U.K.’s carbon floor policy. On top of that, they must pay for EU carbon allowances, which traded Monday at 16.68 euros a ton (14.83 pounds a ton). Together, the two levies cost utilities about 33 pounds a ton for their emissions…
While the two charges together are about the same as what polluters would pay based on today’s prices, the fixed tax would prevent polluters for paying more in the event that prices surge in the EU’s emissions market…https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-29/u-k-pollution-costs-may-be-cut-in-half-under-no-deal-brexit

thought “renewables” were cheaper than coal!

30 Oct: Financial Times: No-deal Brexit will spell 16pound-a-tonne carbon tax
Contingency plans to replace the EU Emissions Trading Scheme unveiled
by David Sheppard
The announcement, while contingent on no-deal Brexit, removes one of the big uncertainties for UK power markets at a time of great upheaval in the system.
“This is essentially replicting the role of the EU ETS component in the event of a no-deal Bresit,” said Josh Burke at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics.
“It’s probably high enough to keep coal off the system in the next couple of years. But the question will be what they decide in the longer term.”…

Combined, emissions will be taxed at a fixed rate of 34 pounds a tonne in the UK, well above the 25 pound level most analysts believe is needed to make the use of CHEAPER but highly polluting coal unattractive.
The measure was welcomed by Will Gardiner, chief executive of Drax Group, which has been investing in converting its coal-fired power plants to burning wood pellets with the help of UK government subsidies…

The EU has redesigned the system to start removing a surplus of the allowances from 2019 in a bid to raise the price to make coal uncompetitive…
(UK Treasury) said that the “government is also legislating so it can prepare for a range of long-term carbon pricing options”, without giving further details.https://www.ft.com/content/14606058-db9e-11e8-8f50-cbae5495d92b

McGrath tried to sound very autoritative on BBC last nite with this story:

29 Oct: BBC: Climate change is ‘escalator to extinction’ for mountain birds
By Matt McGrath
Scientists have produced new evidence that climate change is driving tropical bird species who live near a mountain top to extinction.
Researchers have long predicted many creatures will seek to escape a warmer world by moving towards higher ground.
However, those living at the highest levels cannot go any higher, and have been forecast to decline.
This study found that eight bird species that once lived near a Peruvian mountain peak have now disappeared…

“The tropical mountain areas are the hottest of biodiversity hotspots; they harbour more species than any other place on Earth,” lead author Dr Benjamin Freeman from the University of British Columbia told BBC News.
“It’s only got a little bit warmer in the tropics and tropical plants and animals seem to be living quite a bit higher now than they used to.”…

Of 16 species that were restricted to the very top of the ridge, eight had disappeared completely in the most recent survey.
“These birds have moved up the mountain as much as you’d predict if temperature was this master switch that controlled where they live,” said Dr Freeman.
“The ones that lived near the top 30 years ago are gone.”…
The study has been published (LINK) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46020959

Like all these stories it’s high on rhetoric and ideology but low on scientific substance , one quick look around thirty years ago and one quick look around recently does not make a scientific story of any worth .

thought they were so cheap, they didn’t need taypayer money – like you do, ABC:

30 Oct: ABC: Billionaire industrialist Sanjeev Gupta throws down clean energy financing challenge to Government
RN Breakfast By David Taylor
Sanjeev Gupta, the British billionaire who rescued the Whyalla steelworks from administration, has called on the Federal Government to do more to make it easier for big companies to access finance to make grand investments in renewable energy.
Mr Gupta said he wanted a “fast track, easy package” that would help businesses fund rooftop solar…

***For some companies, it is now cheaper to use solar power than electricity sourced from a coal-fired power station and several corporates — including Coca-Cola Amatil, Stockland and Woolworths — are pushing ahead with installing thousands of panels…
The industrial market for rooftop solar is expected to expand three-fold by next year as more businesses turn the roofs of their warehouses into solar power plants…

But many in the sector said businesses could only go so far in the adoption of renewables without a broader policy framework from the Federal Government.
Mr Gupta wants the Government to boost the fire power of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which is tasked with providing financial support for companies to go green…

“One of the big constraints in really applying industry at a massive scale is access to capital — and access to long-term capital, and access to cheap capital,” Mr Gupta said.
“Those attributes do not exist in the private market — especially in Australia.”
Mr Gupta said the Government should re-evaluate how industries and consumers could be assisted to develop green energy — not with subsidies, but with better financing support…
However, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation already has enough financial clout to support some companies…

Coal-fired power plants that produce electricity began to retire, and Australia flirted with the prospect of a gas shortage, pushing supply down and prices up…

30 Oct: ABC: Wind farm monitors to warn of approaching wedge-tailed eagles in bid to prevent bird deaths
By Carla Howarth
New technology will be trialled at a Tasmanian wind farm to stop wedge-tailed eagles from being killed by wind turbines.
Several monitoring towers will identify eagles and work out whether the bird’s flight path will collide with a turbine, before shutting the turbine down.
The Cattle Hill Wind Farm in Tasmania’s Central Plateau is under construction, and will be the first wind farm in the country to trial the technology.

Goldwind Australia managing director John Titchen said 16 monitoring towers would be interspersed between 48 wind turbines.
Mr Titchen said the birds could be detected within a kilometre of the monitoring tower…
Mr Titchen said the turbines will be placed away from “high utilisation areas” of the eagles, at least one kilometre away from nests…

Wildlife biologist Nick Mooney said he was hopeful the technology worked, and that it was hard to estimate how many eagles were killed by wind turbines.
“Most eagles found dead are found immediately under the turbines, but that’s only the ones killed instantly or catastrophically injured and fall,” he said.
“We have no idea how many wobble off and die elsewhere.”
Mr Mooney said the threat of turbines would increase over time as wind farms were rolled out across the landscape.
***”Now is a really good time to intercede and really get it right because the future of Tasmania is renewable energy.”

Posted earlier and with all the constraints wind has this will surely be the death of this subsidy mining business .
Take SA as an example , wind power is restricted when the sun shines and when the wind is too much or too little and now they have to turn turbines off if birds are in the vicinity .
This will reduce their efficiency rating right down and costs up ,add to this the latest report into human health being affected by wind turbines it doesn’t bode well for the industry .

Pat, you must be the best read here of NEWS. What happened to the 700 hostages taken by ISIS when they over-ran an aid station in Syria a couple of weeks ago? We were told the US bombed the Kurds by mistake and ISIS made the best of the confusion.

A search gave results from many sources on the 18th and 19th, nothing since. Do you know anything about this?

you are right. that story died a quick death. you may have seen the following about the 130 families(700 individuals):

19 Oct: Sputnik: Pentagon Unaware of US Hostages Taken Near Syria’s Deir Ez-Zor
The US Department of Defense has no information regarding US nationals being taken hostage near the Syrian city of Deir Ez-Zor, Pentagon spokesperson Cmdr. Sean Robertson told Sputnik.
Earlier on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Daesh* terrorists had recently begun expanding their presence on the left bank of the Euphrates river in Syria, taking nearly 700 people hostage, including citizens of the United States and European countries.

“While we have confirmed that there was an attack on an IDP camp near Deir Ez-Zor last week, we have no information supporting the large number of hostages alleged by President Putin and we are skeptical of its accuracy,” Robertson said on Thursday. “We are also unaware of any US nationals located in that camp.”…

SOHR is ridiculous, as far as I’m concerned, but this is Adbulrahman’s version:

19 Oct: MiddleEastEye: Islamic State has seized 700 hostages in Syria’s Deir Ezzor, says Putin
Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the UK-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR), told Euronews that the number of hostages was actually around 300.
He confirmed they were taken last week from a camp near Hajin, east of Deir Ezzor, and were brought to territory controlled by the militant group.
“The Islamic State was controlling the camp for three hours and took the people hostage from the camp to inside the ISIS area,” he said.
“Inside the camp some people who were refugees and pro-ISIS were helping ISIS to control the camp for three hours and to take the people hostage.”

a Syrian version. SDF are primarily Kurds, but also some other groups:

23 Oct: Muraselon: US-Backed Militia Meet with ISIL in Deir Ezzor
The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has entered talks with ISIL in Eastern Deir Ezzor to release its captives in return for allowing aid cargoes to the terrorist group, a militant-affiliated news website reported on Tuesday.
Orient news website reported that talks between ISIL and SDF are underway in Deir Ezzor, adding that the talks are over releasing SDF’s captives by the ISIL in return for food convoys to ISIL-held regions by the SDF.
If agreed, the US-backed militia should also establish a safe corridor in Eastern Deir Ezzor for the ISIL, according to the report…https://en.muraselon.com/2018/10/us-militia-isil-deir-ezzor/

it’s all so murky, but it seems wheeling and dealing hostages is part of everyday life in certain parts of the country. very sad to see Syria destroyed over the past 7 years.

Electric cars being charged by 100% renewable power ! A company standing at the trough and getting bucket loads of feed in return for promising to make magical cars in the failed socialist state .
And where was I when Herr Andrews promised 100% emissions free by 2050 ? if still alive by then the communists can have my filthy polluting four wheel drive if they can prise it from my cold hands .

“The only problem is we do not find customers who want to drive an electric vehicle and face all the constraints that come with that.

“No, never, never,” he insisted

The biggest issue he cites is price. Without financial subsidies EVs will not be able to overcome the cost of their lithium-ion batteries to compete with conventionally-engined vehicles.

Mr Frohlich said the cost of a 100 kilowatt hour (kW/h) battery pack that provides an EV about 500km of range, costs up to $25,000 alone.

“You can produce whole [conventional] cars with the cost of the [EV] battery,” he said.

And Mr Frohlich claimed that building more batteries won’t reduce the cost because that will drive up the demand for cobalt, a rare-earth metal critical to the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries.

This is according to Klaus Frohlich, head of BMW research and development, thus involved in the production of EVs. He likes EVs. So do I. So what? Debt-ridden Victoria, now deliberately crippling its manufacturing base, cannot afford this folly. Australia cannot afford this folly.

There is a very uncomfortable situation developing right now in South America. Proxy wars and resource grabs are not out of the question. One thing at stake is Venezuela’s oil, another is Bolivia’s lithium. Meanwhile there is a permanently uncomfortable situation in Africa and the Congo’s cobalt is very much at stake. Where do we come by the idea that replacing oil with new foreign entanglements and dependencies is a way forward?

The way forward is our own coal, even Victoria’s brown muck. If someone reckons we can turn our abundant lithium into batteries for a good price they’re welcome to try. On their own dime. Good luck. Might need some coal power though. Just ask China’s lithium battery manufacturers. Admittedly Ningde giga-factory runs off hydro and nukes. Does Victoria have hydro and nuke plans we don’t know about?

Without financial subsidies EVs will not be able to overcome the cost of their lithium-ion batteries to compete with conventionally-engined vehicles.

At what point will various governments decide they can no longer subside EVs while, simultaneously forgoing petrol tax and 30% [say] rego? A tesla is heavy and powerful and will damage roads more than the family Corolla. Why should a battler with a corolla subsidise an EV w@nker?

And Mr Frohlich claimed that building more batteries won’t reduce the cost because that will drive up the demand for cobalt, a rare-earth metal critical to the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries.

More basically, a battery is a commodity and the point of diminishing returns cuts in pretty quickly after a technology matures. AA cells are made by the billions but are still expensive per W/Hr.

Came across this battery info on Casey Research a few days ago . . . . .

“Tesla’s ambitious CEO, Elon Musk, spent $5 billion to build this massive battery factory in the Nevada desert. It’s as big as 95 football fields. And it can make 500,000 batteries a year, mostly for electric cars.

Well, China’s new factory is 50 TIMES bigger than Tesla’s Gigafactory.”

24,000,000 batteries a year for electric cars is the production figure given. Anyone else seen anything on this?

As far as I know there are a couple of individual factories in China which, on completion, will be more or less the equal of Tesla’s in Nevada. Then there is supposed to be a Tesla factory going up in Shanghai. No doubt it will be big. I’ve heard of nothing 50 times the size of Nevada’s.

For the sake of ordinary Nevadans one has to hope the gigafactory there is a long-term success. For now it’s a gigantic tax sponge which has created an accommodation crisis even for those with Tesla employment. Tesla tops up its cash with discounted sales of tax credits to the casinos while it’s hard to get a pothole filled from state revenues.

Well, it’s all gone too far to stop now. Let’s hope the new fast-charge stations are as good as touted and that all the subsidy money will be paid back by those good fairies who got their start switching kiddie teeth for coins.

I still reckon a coffee franchise hard-by a recharge station would be gold. Imagine pulling up only to find two punters ahead of you on the queue. I’d make your fourth coffee free after overcharging on the the first three. Hombre, whatever you save on the low-carb swings I’ll grab on the coffee roundabout.

Felicity is a political volunteer phoning around my electorate to gauge political views for the Labor Party in the upcoming election in Victoria.

I said that my NO 1. issue was government wasting our money on Renewable Energy. That lead to a remarkable conversation. Felicity forgot about her immediate task, which was to get data for the local member and wanted to engage me on the Climate Change debate!

It turns out that Felicity is a graduate in Applied Chemistry (30 years ago) and she is a total believer in the CAGWT. So we had a debate about Climate Science which went much longer than I would have anticipated, mainly because Felicity thought that she could convince me that CAGWT is true.

Felicity had some arguments about electron orbital levels and IR absorbtion, which I had no problem with so I asked her if the CO2 warmed with IR Radiation and she said yes. Her first approach was an appeal to Authority. She said that thousands of experiments had proven that CO2 warms with IR radiation. So I asked her to name just one, but she was unprepared so no response.

Then I said that I had just read though the experiments of John Tyndal 1860s. I said that Tyndal had correctly shown that IR input at one end of his tube did not come out the other end if green house gases were introduced but it was not apparent it the energy was absorbed or scattered. At that she back tracked a bit and said it was a bit of both but again she could not back it up.

From there we went to the IPCC. When I said that they were biased and political and that the summaries did not reflect the full reports she was a bit unsure.

Then she said that the Nature Journal endorsed CO2 global warming.I said that they were well known as totally biased. At that stage she decided to withdraw. I did ask for some contacxt so that we could continue the debate but she declined.

So we reached an impasse, as David Evans said in the previous post. No one won and neither of us was convinced.

What I was a bit surprised by was that Felicity was not well prepared to debate a skeptic.

Some years ago I found an AGW enthusiast at the local monthly market (Stirling in the Adelaide Hills) spruiking renewables etc. from a booth, complete with placards and pamphlets. I debated with him, politely, and it became so obvious (to him) that he was so far out of his depth that he packed up and left, and hasn’t reappeared.

G3, I spent a few months in the Adelaide hills in a previous life. If you know your local history you may know Birralee and deduce why I was there. Very nice except that my bride of six months was in Elizabeth and didn’t drive.

I live in the Adelaide Hills now. 60% of people commute to Adelaide for work. A few use the buses but for most the only feasible option is the South Eastern Freeway to Adelaide. Stopping people driving will kill these people’s employment. I suspect that an awful lot of people will not put up with that nonesence.

Some years ago I found an AGW enthusiast at the local monthly market (Stirling in the Adelaide Hills) spruiking renewables etc. from a booth, complete with placards and pamphlets. I debated with him, politely, and it became so obvious (to him) that he was so far out of his depth that he packed up and left, and hasn’t reappeared.

Same thing happened to me in the Mall at Stockland, not long before we left Rockhampton.

Two of them were in a pop up stall in one of the aisles.

You all know how they work. As you approach, they start up.

As I got close, trying desperately to avoid his gaze, he actually walked towards me ….. and asked.

Socialism kills. From the former Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela, anywhere socialism has been tried, it has robbed people of freedom and their property; produced economic stagnation and misallocation of resources; and resulted in millions of deaths, caused either directly or indirectly.

Energy socialism, as touted by 28-year-old self-described socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives in New York, would be just as deadly. Arguing in her platform, “Climate change is the single biggest national security threat for the United States and the single biggest threat to worldwide industrialized civilization,” Ocasio-Cortez has proposed a plan to transition the United States to a 100-percent renewable energy system by 2035.

Recognizing that a massive transformation of the U.S. energy system, which took more than 80 years to build, would be a herculean undertaking, Ocasio-Cortez has proposed a “Green New Deal,” similar to the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II, requiring “the investment of trillions of dollars.”

Showing the extent to which socialist thinking has captured the Democratic Party’s imagination, hundreds Democratic candidates for local, state, and federal office in 2018 have signed a pledge to push for the 100 percent renewable energy makeover. Even worse, dozens of Democratic lawmakers are attempting to pass radical climate legislation, the Off Fossil Fuels for a Better Future Act, which they’re calling “the most aggressive piece of climate legislation ever introduced in Congress.” The Off Act would require “100 percent renewable energy by 2035 (and 80 percent by 2027), places a moratorium on new fossil fuel projects, bans the export of oil and gas, and also moves our automobile and rail systems to 100 percent renewable energy.”

30 Oct: CarbonBrief: Budget 2018: Key climate and energy announcements
by Simon Evans, Jocelyn Timperley
Philip Hammond, the chancellor, has delivered his last budget before the UK is set to leave the EU in March 2019. It was a lengthy speech (LINK) full of technical detail, but included no references to climate change…

In a nod to the environment and repeating near-identical language used in last year’s budget speech, Hammond said: “We cannot secure our children’s future unless we secure our planet’s future.”
His budget “Red Book” adds: “The economy of the future will be low carbon and green, and the UK is well positioned to lead this global transition. The budget sets out how the government is accelerating this shift to a clean economy.”…READ ONhttps://www.carbonbrief.org/budget-2018-key-climate-energy-annoucements

29 Oct: NatureClimateChange: Let it snow
Global snow coverage has declined substantially with anthropogenic warming, impacting biological, socio-economic and physical systems. This issue includes a suite of Comments, Reviews, Perspectives and original research documenting the importance of snow in the climate system, and how this may change with continued warming…https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0332-5

The survey shows that way too many people still know stuff all about renewables. Anyone with much knowledge about them would put renewables last on the list. It highlights the real problems – that most people’s beliefs are based on little knowledge, and that way too many people are gullible enough to believe the bullshat fed to them by media. The biggest problem of all is that most of the MSM are stupid as or are lying scum.

There was an interesting example of the parallel universe syndrome in the UK last night. On one of the TV news channels, the newspaper reviewers picked up two stories in particular. One was about the differential health outcomes in the UK, north comparing very badly with south (=poverty). All part of the “Cost Of Living Crisis”/”Austerity Britain” narrative.

Next was a piece on the new-to-the-UK (relatively) hallowe’en “celebration”. The article declared that the cost to the UK is £690million! One of the reviewers said he’s bought three sets of hallowe’en outfits for his 17m old child (who won’t have a clue what it’s about) because he couldn’t decide which was best. The other noted the expense of hallowe’en parties for adults. This shows it’s just any excuse to party. Have we reached the “Bread and Circuses” stage?

- the waste of money we supposedly don’t have;
- the misdirected growth of pumpkins instead of proper food;
- the suggestion that fashion is the world’s second biggest polluter after fossil fuel;
- the likelihood that 90% of the £690million will end up in landfill and;
- the problem with waste plastic

seem not to have registered with these sophisticated, “intelligent” people. Why would the politicians make an effort when their constituents haven’t a clue?